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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29708667">The Memory Man.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DenmarkStreetGutterClub/pseuds/DenmarkStreetGutterClub'>DenmarkStreetGutterClub</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Banter, Drunken Kissing, Eventual Smut, F/M, Idiots in Love, If you don't want pure Strellacott maybe skip this, Romance, Swans</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:28:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,229</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29708667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DenmarkStreetGutterClub/pseuds/DenmarkStreetGutterClub</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Robin and Strike get very drunk. It might have led to something, but they can't remember. So what does that mean? Will it lead anywhere else, and will they have to be drunk again to find out?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>107</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>"You</span>
  </em>
  <span> shaid it was in your desk drawer,” Robin’s tone was accusatory, her words thick from the effects of alcohol.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, I thought it was,” Strike protested, and then belched loudly, thumping his chest with his fist as though to bash down any further uncouth noises. Robin hadn’t even noticed, focusing on the drawer for a few more seconds, but she had got to the point where the room and its contents were oscillating and gave up, flopping down in Strike’s chair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m too drunk to do this. Shoulda juss gone home,” she said, rubbing her cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“D’you want a hot drink?” Strike said, leaning against the door frame.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you’re having one,” Robin said, slipping a few centimetres down in the chair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘M only suggesting it for you really. Think I might have some water, try and lessen the pain in the morning,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Water. Yeah,” Robin nodded, unfocused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike staggered to the kitchenette and poured one glass of water, and used one of the mugs himself, drinking a whole mugful of water before carefully walking back into the office, holding the glass like he was bringing a tribute. Robin had been distracted by the ends of her hair, and she looked up to see him putting the glass down on the desk in front of her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wassat?” She said, her brow furrowing in a familiar and amusing way, and Strike chuckled a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘S water, innit?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ok,” she said and returned to examining her split ends until her eyes crossed and she shook her head and blinked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Y’should drink it. We’ve had a skinful and iss gonna hurt tomorrow,” he insisted, pushing it closer, some of the contents sloshing over the lip of the glass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not my dad,” Robin said, and responded to her own comment by giggling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike tried to process what was funny, and his quizzical expression made Robin giggle more. She leaned forward and brought the glass to her lips with both hands, gulping down a few large mouthfuls. Then she burped loudly, and it was Strike’s turn to laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t go home now. ‘S late and you’re bladdered. You should stay in my bed,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Earlier in the evening the misspoken offer would have been an opportunity for some light banter, but now both of them had enough trouble trying to slot the words into the part of their brains that dealt with basic comprehension that all Robin could manage was to open her mouth and raise her right hand as though trying to form a question.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, I’ll sleep down here. Not with you,” Strike tried to row back, and Robin snapped her mouth shut in surprise. In both of their drink fuddled minds, there were far too many thoughts competing for supremacy, and the result was a charged silence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ok,” she managed eventually, and pulled herself up, accepting at least that she wasn’t steady enough to make it all the way home as she walked round the desk towards the door. She stumbled as she got there, and Strike lumbered towards her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“C’mon, I’ll walk up behind you,” he offered, and they carefully and deliberately went out onto the landing and Robin pushed the door and took a few steps up towards Strike’s small flat. Something occurred to her that disappeared out of her mind as she turned to say it, but Strike was right behind her, and the action of turning destabilized her. Despite both of them being absolutely hammered, their mutual survival instincts acted in unison, Robin’s arms reaching out to steady herself on his shoulders, and Strike reaching to stop her tumbling further. The shock of it made them both laugh, and then, with the suddenness of a slap, their mouths crashed together, like a switch had been tripped. It was a bruising, clumsy kiss, all hot breath and hands in hair, and it ended as suddenly as it had started, leaving them bewildered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Watch your step,” Strike said, gesturing to the rest of the stairs, as though nothing had happened, but his face revealed his stunned reaction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Robin replied, turning and climbing the flight up to the flat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The maelstrom of thoughts was almost overwhelming now, and neither detective could draw out any of them as the thing that should definitely be said now. If anything, by the time they reached the flat, clarity seemed permanently out of reach. Which was why, as Robin fell onto Strike’s bed, she simply closed her eyes and let the feel of the cold pillow soothe her quickly into sleep, and why Strike sat on the end of the bed and then collapsed backwards and was snoring a few seconds later.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>The following morning, the bustling sounds of the city outside broke into Strike’s mind first, but Robin followed him into consciousness a few seconds later, wincing against the constricting headache that felt like her skull might pop. It wasn’t the only physical constriction she could feel, and she realized what it was at the same point Strike did, lifting his head from her belly, his arm draped over her hips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were both fully dressed, Strike in the warm jumper over his rumpled blue shirt, and Robin in a neat skirt, her blouse rucked up out of the waistband, revealing a smooth expanse of skin that had a few temporary creases from where Strike's head had been resting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a few more seconds for full comprehension to dawn on them, and when it did, Robin snapped up to sitting, while Strike, much slower on the uptake, remained curled round her hips in a daze for a little longer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What the f-" he said, disoriented further by her sudden movement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We… we were drinking," Robin said, her mind frantically trying to piece the evening together. "And now we're in your bedroom."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike pulled his arm from around her at last and sat up. Robin's head suddenly felt even worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh god, we didn't. Did we?" She asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, I'd like to think you might have remembered if we had," Strike replied, his pride a little wounded. "Besides, we've both got most of our clothes on, so odds are we just fell asleep."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin looked down at herself and made a half hearted attempt at straightening her blouse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Can you remember anything?" She said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, not really," he admitted after a minute.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I suppose one of us would have remembered if…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fucksake, Robin, yes, I'm pretty bloody sure one of us would, all right?" Strike said, but there was humour in his voice now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Sorry," Robin replied. "I just… it feels very odd to have a blank space between being in the pub and being in… your bed."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The last two words hit like brick in a bucket, and their eyes met. Robin could feel herself blushing, and she rubbed her hair, and then attempted to smooth it down as she averted her gaze.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Right. Well, I think a cuppa and a bit of brekkie, yeah?" Strike suggested, pushing himself up. "Bloody hell, I didn't even take my leg off. We must have just collapsed."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah," Robin replied. "We definitely must."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even as she stood, though, a niggle worked away in the back of her mind. There was something else. Something in the blank space that hung, shapeless, waiting for the light to flick on and reveal it. He was obviously right, they were still dressed, and aside from him curled around her naked belly, it seemed that there had been no intimate contact.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She visited the loo, and confirmed knickers in situ. When she emerged, he'd poured her a glass of water and a blister pack of paracetamol sat beside it on the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Kettle's on. I've got some eggs, sausages, and I've put some bread in the toaster," he said when he saw her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She felt queasy at the very thought, but he seemed quite engaged with the process, so she went and sat at the table, consuming two of the tablets and the entire glass of water.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After he had brought over two plates and two mugs balanced precariously on top, and devoured his breakfast, he seemed much more with it. Robin managed one sausage and two mouthfuls of toast, but the egg was a step too far, and no sooner had she swallowed than she was running into the loo to be sick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You ok?" Strike asked gently, standing at the door as she held her hair out of her face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah," she assured him weakly. "I feel a bit better now I've thrown up."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Nice," he said, grinning. "Did you want another glass of water?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No, I'll come and have my tea."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A short while later, they made their way down to the office. Strike went first, Robin behind, and just as they reached the last few steps, the sudden memory of what had happened there a few hours before snapped into focus for Robin, and she gasped. The sound made Strike turn suddenly, and the movement brought him back to the exact position he had been in when they had drunkenly devoured each other, and triggered his own recollection of the event. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open a little. Robin closed her mouth and swallowed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh shit," they both said, at the same time.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There was no repeat of the previous evening’s sudden, unbidden passion, though the memory of it was now pin sharp in Strike’s mind. He tried to read Robin’s expression, and found himself simply wishing she had her hands on his shoulders again, as he registered that she looked stunned and faintly horrified. He squinted, nervously, as he might if he was bracing for a slap, but it soon became evident they were just staring at each other, and had been for an awkwardly long time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I, er,” he began, which seemed to break the frozen inaction, “I forgot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” replied Robin, swallowing again. She looked beyond him, to the door at the bottom of the stairs, and he took it as a cue to turn and complete their descent. As they arrived at the office door, he realized he hadn’t locked it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Christ, we really were out of it,” he said, by way of trying to shift the subject to his lax security measures, but of course the context of the kiss was relevant to his comment, so it didn’t help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin, on autopilot, went over to the kettle and filled it. She was trying to order her thoughts, and had had no more success at reading Strike’s reaction than he had with hers. Strike had moved into the inner office, in his own attempt to gather some composure. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It was only a kiss</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thought. Part of his mind was telling him this was the good news; a deeper, more treacherous part was reminding him that the good news was she had slept in his bed and the bad news was that nothing more than a kiss happened. But no, it would have been bad, he argued with himself. Blind drunk would have been a mistake. If he was going to do it, he wanted… </span>
  <em>
    <span>no. Stop that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin’s thoughts were only briefly interrupted by the kettle flicking off as it boiled. She had started tamping down her mortification by wondering how to be as professional as possible about it. Drunk mistakes happen, they were both grown adults, it was just an incidence of alcohol induced high spirits, they could move on. Her mind had then slipped back to being above him on the stairs, running her hands from his shoulders into his hair, feeling the urgency of his lips against hers. She caught her breath at the intensity of the feeling, even as a memory. She needed to stop this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Taking a steadying breath in the office, Strike decided to go and sit at his desk, waiting for Robin to make the first move. She entered a minute later carrying two mugs of coffee, and an inscrutable expression.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks,” he said, as she handed him one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Listen,” Robin said, going to her own desk and sitting down. “We were drunk, these things happen, it doesn’t have to…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She trailed off, her attempt at breezy confidence faltering. She tried again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It doesn’t have to be a…” she said quickly, but Strike had tried to leap in and fill the gap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, it doesn’t have to make things weird,” he said at the same time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The overlap in speech did nothing to ease the embarrassment. Strike took a mouthful of coffee, put his mug down. They hadn’t made eye contact since the moment on the stairs when they had both remembered what they had done. It didn’t have to make things weird, but it had, nonetheless. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Robin nodded slowly. She finally flicked her eyes up from the empty desk top in front of her, and Strike saw unmistakable fear there, and his chest constricted uncomfortably. What had he done?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve fucked this up,” he said, wincing against the rising sense of panicked guilt and the feeling that, even now, he’d like to kiss her again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Robin said, a touch more emphatically than necessary. “No, you haven’t. We both… we both just got carried away.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The placating tone in her voice seemed to dull the glimmer of fearfulness in her eyes, and Strike felt the panic subside. Though not, he noted, the desire to kiss her again. He nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right. These things happen,” he said, echoing her. “I just…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Robin asked, feeling a little more on surer ground now the initial blundering seemed to have passed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just didn’t want you to think… I don’t remember how we got upstairs, but I don’t think we…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I don’t think we did either,” Robin agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Course I don’t know if we did anything else,” he felt confident enough to say this lightly, with a small smile, and knew immediately it was a mis-step, as it was clear this hadn’t even occurred to Robin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh god,” she said. She’d checked her knickers were on, of course, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>obviously</span>
  </em>
  <span> they could have done something else. She felt the blush rise in her cheeks, both at the possibility and that she had just made it very apparent she was naive enough not to have thought of it. Perhaps that was a good sign. If she hadn’t thought of it this morning, maybe she hadn’t thought of it last night. </span>
  <em>
    <span>But he did.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry, Robin. I am pretty sure we didn’t do anything but fall asleep,” Strike said, leaning forward, feeling wretched, desperate to make this better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, but you don’t remember anything. Any more than I do. And we woke up cuddling,” she said, and Strike had let the contented half smile rise before he had registered the jittery tone in her statements. It was too late.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> remember something!” She exclaimed, misreading the smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No! I don’t,” he tried to pacify her, “I don’t remember anything!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then why are you grinning?!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not grinning!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You bloody are, you smiled when I said we woke up cuddling!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike sucked in a breath, held it for two seconds and pushed it out in a defeated sigh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because it was a nice way to wake up! Ok?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt beyond ridiculous now, completely exposed, and the dregs of his hangover felt exponentially worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin had sat back in her chair, quiet. The agitated confrontation had taken a completely unexpected turn and she had no roadmap for this territory. She opened her mouth, trying to form words in response. She didn’t succeed, but Strike’s words eventually began to register as a compliment, and she let out a half laugh, borne of disbelief and relief and something else mixed in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I could have done without the headache,” she managed, and Strike could hear her normal tone pushing the anxious one away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I’ll give you that,” he replied, allowing a shy smile to return as he looked down at what was left in his coffee mug. He pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“D’you mind?” He asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Course not,” Robin replied. She was feeling happier, and more uncertain at the same time. She watched Strike light up and take a long first drag, and she realized it was the first one he had had that Saturday morning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m trying to quit,” he said, even though she hadn’t asked. “Hadn’t had a fag in two days, probably why I got so shit faced last night. Think I might cut myself some slack this morning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not sure getting that drunk is a helpful strategy, to be honest,” Robin said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, no. What was your excuse?” he laughed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m your partner. We share everything,” she replied, in a matter of fact tone, and they both chuckled gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are we ok, then?” he asked at last, drawing her eyes and willing this to end on a positive, if inconclusive note.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Course we are,” she said, tossing her hair behind her as she shook her head, the action reminding her of how tender her head felt and she winced against it. “But you’ll have to find another quitting aid. I’m never drinking again.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were no hugely pressing matters that morning, it being a rare weekend with nothing needful, and after a few little jobs done simply because they were there, lunchtime ticked round, and Strike had suggested hair of the dog, despite Robin’s protestations of eternal sobriety.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine, you can have a coke then,” he said as she settled herself on a stool in The Tottenham.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She watched him at the bar as she pulled her bag over herself and set it on the ground beneath her feet. He looked much more chipper than she felt, exchanging pleasantries with the barman who was pulling him a pint of Doombar. She knew when Strike was in a very good mood; he held his big frame more lightly, his usual resting expression of grumpiness softened ever so slightly into the occasional easy smile. Given the hangover and the awkward embarrassment of waking up wrapped around each other, she was trying not to examine why he would be so cheerful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He returned to the table, and placed a tumbler of coke in front of her, the half slice of lemon in it buoyed by the fizz. She took a sip and felt instantly a bit better, her eyes closing as she sighed with the slight sense of reprieve from the dull headache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Imagine how you’d feel with a proper drink,” Strike said, sitting opposite her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. Not for a very long time,” she insisted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, you’ve shifted in the space of minutes. It was never, ever again before I got the coke. Give it ten more minutes you’ll be pissed as a fart again,” he said dryly, and she stuck her tongue out at him. He snorted a laugh in response.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What were you actually planning for this weekend?” She asked, taking another sip.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothin’. I haven’t had a weekend off for bloody months, so I was gonna watch the four o’clock kick off this afternoon, and have another lie in on Sunday like this morning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He caught Robin’s eye as he said it, and it was her turn to be unable to repress a slight smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, not exactly like this morning,” he clarified, coughing slightly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s no need to hurt my feelings. You said it was a nice way to wake up earlier, don’t spoil it,” Robin said lightly. He grinned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look, I really don’t think anything happened at all. In bed that is. But I do remember kissing you,” he said, after taking the top off his pint. He felt like candour was a good move, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look her in the face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I remember us kissing each other, I think,” Robin affirmed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, yeah. I don’t think I overpowered you on the stairs,” he replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think I’d be having a cosy chat with you if you had, Strike,” she said, a little archly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Point taken,” he said. “So…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin waited, unsure if this was a question she should already have an answer for, or if he was going to finish the sentence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’d say it was the both of us?” He finally managed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you worried I’m going to sue you for sexual harrassment?” She chuckled, more as a deflection than anything else. She felt she knew where this was going, and she wasn’t sure what she thought about that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” He returned, a little more defensively than she was expecting him to. “I just… doesn’t matter. Forget it,” he said, and she was rather sad to note he seemed crestfallen. He picked up a spare coaster and tapped it absently on the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was joking,” she said, putting her hand on his forearm. He looked at her from underneath thunderous brows, and she didn’t know it, but the expression in his eyes was a mirror of the fear he had seen in hers in the few minutes after they had remembered what happened. He nodded, taking a fortifying drink from his pint.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know. Sorry. We said it didn’t need to be weird, and I’m making it weird. Ignore me. You hungry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, a bit,” Robin replied, taking the conciliatory olive branch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How about some lunch before you go and enjoy the rest of your weekend?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sounds good,” she smiled, but she wasn’t quite sure what else she would be doing except reliving a drunken, heated kiss in a stairwell.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Robin wasn’t the only one who spent the weekend like that. Despite settling down at half three with a beer for the pre-match commentary, trying to lose himself in the discussion about the team news, Strike kept zoning out to the bottom of his stairs. Somehow, both the kiss itself and the groggy remembrance the following day melded into a seamless whole, and Robin stayed resolutely, gloriously dishevelled in his mind, lips kiss-swollen, hair awry, sparkling grey blue eyes darkened by dilated pupils.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So what do we think Wenger’s thinking today?” Lineker was asking Mark Lawrenson. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike tried to crowbar his errant concentration back to the FA cup match details. He took a swig from his bottle of beer and adjusted himself in the armchair. The match kicked off, and he sank into the pleasant distraction of green pitch, the bobbling ball chased by sweaty men and the floating rhythm of the chants from the fans. He didn’t make it to half time without zoning out at least three more times, and needed a pee at the 45 minute mark. He stood up at the whistle, visited the loo and as he made his way back, he glanced over to his bedroom door, slightly ajar. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Standing in the opening, he looked at his bed, still rumpled from the two bodies that had lain on top of it, innocently sleeping together. The details of getting up there were foggy, still, but he felt snatches of memory of the actual night poke through the blankness, like stars in an inky sky. He didn’t remember kissing her again, but as he stood, rubbing his bristled jaw, he recalled laying on his back, and being woken by an unpleasant stab of heartburn. He had turned towards the centre of the bed, mildly surprised by the warmth of Robin beside him, and had been too tired, too drunk and too far from self control to resist putting an arm round the part of her he could reach, snuggling into the softness of her belly. She had made a sound a little like a purr in her sleep, her right hand reaching down to scratch her tummy, pulling her blouse out of her skirt as she did so. The action exposed her creamy soft skin, and Strike had definitely known at that point that he should turn away, but her hand had then rested on the back of his neck, and he simply couldn’t summon any good reason to move from that spot and the way it made him feel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...and it’s back to John Motson for the second half…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blinking, Strike was back in the present. He turned back to his armchair, but the football might as well have been white noise. Nothing had happened, he had said. He knew it wasn’t true. No, he hadn’t jumped her, and everything normally covered in public had remained untouched. But they had shared a more blissfully intimate night than he had enjoyed in years, and the way he felt now, they might as well have had a fully conscious night of extreme passion. He spent the rest of the evening working through their conversations that day to see if he’d managed to blow his chances of that possibility ever actually happening. Maybe the Gunners winning was an omen, but he only paid scant attention to the score.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On Sunday, Robin was getting a bit pissed off with the determined hole in her memory before waking up with Strike snuggled into her. She had woken up in her own bed, shunning a pang of regret that his arm wasn’t draped over her hips again. She went for a run, trying to lose herself in the rhythm of her feet thumping against the pavement. Her playlist blasted loud as she moved, but each song seemed to drag her back to some aspect of the big hairy bear of a man, either sleeping soundly against her tummy, or sitting in front of her in the pub, charmingly nervous, or, most alarming and distracting of all, kissing the life out of her on his stairs. Eventually she had no choice but to examine why the intensity burned into her, and the more she looked at it, the more she knew she couldn’t honestly say that some of her drunken, incoherent thoughts hadn’t been that he would follow her upstairs and when she lay on his bed, he would resume the breathless kiss and she’d let him do whatever he wanted, with all the enthusiasm she could muster. She had no confidence at all that it had been all in her head, and the dark space in her mind between that stair climb and waking the following day remained impenetrable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She showered when she got in, and the exercise and refreshment of feeling clean and energized gave her a little clarity. Putting on some grey trackie bottoms and a fluffy soft pink jumper, her hair towel dried, she sat on the sofa and picked up her phone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>How was the match?</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She held the phone in her hand, waiting for the reply to her overture.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>
    <em>You can check the BBC website if you need the score.</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The reply pinged back as quickly as she hoped it would. She smirked, her tongue poking out slightly as she concentrated on her reply. She used the backspace a number of times, unhappy with each possible bantering response.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your busy social calendar.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>
    <em>You’re alright. It’s not me updating the BBC website. What’s up?</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Nothing. Bit bored.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>
    <em>You’ve got to get better at having a day off.</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Got any tips?</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was no reply for a slightly longer time, but Robin could see the dots working as Strike was working on his retort.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>
    <em>You could try messaging your best mate.</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Robin blinked. She had been expecting something longer, given how long the dots indicating that he was typing had played on the bottom of the phone screen. Had he spent those minutes typing and deleting his replies? She looked again at his message. It wasn’t a brush off, was it? She felt a surge of adrenaline as she considered her response, careful not to begin typing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>He might be having a day off himself.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Not from being a mate, though.</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>What’s he doing for the rest of his Sunday, do you think?</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Not a lot. You could phone him and suggest something.</em>
  </b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ok. That was an invitation. Wasn’t it? She stared at her phone, her throat dry, aware that her hand was ever so slightly trembling, a familiar adrenaline response, but not one she usually experienced in pleasurable settings. She didn’t move, frozen into an apprehensive stupor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The phone rang. She pressed the green answer button.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or, he could phone you,” Strike’s voice, warm and curling round his vowels in that familiar way made her smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sounds like he has,” she returned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sounds like he’s a helpful bloke.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s not bad,” Robin agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not bad?” Strike said in mock affrontedness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All right, you’re extremely helpful,” she laughed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Easy, Ellacott, that’s a bit premature, I haven’t suggested anything yet,” he chided playfully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, go on then,” she replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How about getting out of the city for an afternoon? I don’t know, we could go to Windsor, piss about by the river, have an ice cream,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That actually sounds like a really nice idea.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have to sound so bloody surprised,” he grumped, and she wasn’t sure he was putting it on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not, I just hadn’t got any ideas myself!” She laughed in spite of herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right then. Do you wanna drive or shall we get the train?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I’ll drive, I don’t want to be tied to the train,” Robin replied, already getting up and running through a brief plan of action in her head. “I won’t be long. Text you when I’m outside.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I haven't researched the football, so you'll just have to squint at the slight inaccuracies given this isn't strongly set in any particular year, but I think I'm sort of aiming for 2015, April-ish.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Robin checked her reflection in the rear view mirror as she waited for Strike to appear. She had run a hairdryer over her hair and looped it up into a ponytail. She’d swapped the tracksuit bottoms for jeans and boots, but she kept the fluffy pink jumper, the cowl neck comfortable on what was a fresh late spring day, especially if they were going to walk along the river. She looked tidy. She wasn’t sure that was where she was aiming, but she didn’t need to force herself away from asking why that was, as Strike opened the passenger door and hauled himself in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Afternoon, Robin,” he said genially, putting his seatbelt on as she pulled away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Strike,” she nodded, smiling and keeping her eyes on the road.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How’s the quitting going?” She asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve had one since we last saw each other, which is pretty good going I reckon,” he said, unconsciously chewing his thumbnail.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you got any gum or patches?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nope. Gonna try willpower, it’s cheaper,” he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why am I even slightly surprised that’s the plan?” Robin laughed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What did you think I’d do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t even know now. Relying on pure grit because it doesn’t cost as much as patches seems like the most obviously Strike plan ever!” Robin said, hugely amused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike was going to protest, but he couldn’t think of a counter to what she’d said. He smiled inwardly instead, thinking that the way she knew him felt as intimate as curling into her to sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got any biscuits?” He said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, that would have been my second guess,” she smirked, nodding to a small carrier bag in the passenger footwell with a couple of packs of Maryland chocolate chip cookies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ripped open the red foil wrapper of one, and two whole cookies disappeared, and he offered the open pack to Robin, one biscuit helpfully slipped out for her to take.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks!” she said, and he grinned happily as she met his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The drive out of the city took them around an hour, the Sunday traffic light, and the leafy surroundings of Windsor felt a lot further out than it really was. Parking up, Robin jumped out to organize the pay and display, and Strike took the opportunity to stretch in the cool spring sunshine. He looked over at her by the machine, waiting her turn as a couple of people put their coins in before her. The fresh air gave her cheeks the usual healthy glow, and he watched her run her hand over her hair, held back in a long, tidy ponytail. She looked absurdly wholesome, and he felt a rush of affection so strong he forced himself to look away.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What are you doing? </span>
  </em>
  <span>He suddenly felt a massive urge to reach into his pocket for his B&amp;H, but there were none there, and he reached back in the car for the second packet of cookies as an alternative. He was chewing intently as Robin skipped back to the Land Rover. She put the parking ticket on the inside of the windscreen, and locked up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come on then!” She said, cheerfully, and Strike felt a little better, no doubt due to the chocolate chips. They ambled towards the river, an idea they seemed to have shared with quite a number of other people. Strike was still holding the packet of biscuits, and he offered them to Robin as they walked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cheers,” she said, taking two.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So what was the score, by the way, you never said,” she asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Two-One Arsenal. We’ve got Villa or Liverpool in the final depending on who wins today,” he said, looking out over the river.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who d’ya fancy?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well Villa, obviously,” he said, smirking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, obviously,” Robin said, scoffing a little at this supposedly transparent point.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well Liverpool haven’t had the greatest season, but Villa sacked their last manager in February, and they’re Villa, so…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fair enough!” Robin replied, holding up her hands in mock defense. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Never asked, really, d’you follow a team?” He queried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know! Masham Town maybe?” She laughed, shrugging. “It was never much my thing, and… Matt was a rugby man, so..”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Plenty of good Yorkshire teams,” Strike said, fishing out another biscuit. “Where’s Sheffield in relation to Masham?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sheffield is South Yorkshire, Masham’s North. About an hour and half away. I don’t fancy Sheffield much,” Robin shook her head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pity. I could just see you with a 'blades forever' tattoo on your shoulder,” he replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She snorted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well how many Cornish teams are there? Why do I have to have a Yorkshire team, you support Arsenal!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well it's not like I don't have London connections," Strike protested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh right. And the fact that Arsenal are a really good team has nothing to do with it?" Robin teased.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you calling me a glory hunter?" He laughed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No. I would if you supported Man U, though. I know that much," her eyebrow quirked playfully in response.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, I think there's about as much chance of that as Accrington Stanley winning the league," he said, adopting a ropey Liverpudlian to pronounce 'Accrington Stanley'.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You what?" Robin asked, bemused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It was an advert when I was a kid. For milk I think. This Scouse kid has to drink his milk or he'll end up playing for Accrington Stanley, who no one's ever heard of," Strike chuckled, realizing he'd got to the end of the cookies and scrunching up the wrapper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were passing a bin and he dropped it in as they continued. Their pace was leisurely, but he was getting a little sore even so, and Robin suggested a break on one of the empty benches that looked out on the river.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They sat, looking out as the breeze ruffled the water and the copious green trees on the opposite bank. The sky was blue and intermittent steel grey clouds, but it seemed like the breeze was stiff enough to keep the possible rain clouds at bay.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"This is nice," Robin said, stretching her legs out in front of her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, it is," Strike agreed, his own legs mirroring Robin's, but his arms folded tightly against his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you cold?" Robin asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Nope. Just got nothing to occupy my hands and I need a smoke," he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You sure you're doing this the hard way?" Robin asked, pushing her hair behind her ear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I am," he replied, stubbornly. She smiled and returned her gaze to the river. A number of swans were gliding past, their haughty necks inclined towards the two detectives.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Pretty, aren't they?" Robin mused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah. Churning up the water underneath them like a motor, though, just to look that graceful on top," Strike replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, I know. Their feet are ruddy great ugly things too," she agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you a mischief if they take a mind to as well," he added.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do you have to take </span>
  <em>
    <span>all </span>
  </em>
  <span>the romance out of it?" She laughed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Sorry," he replied, a little ruefully. "D'you want an ice cream?" </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was an ice cream van parked up a little further down the river, and Robin went to get a couple of ninety nines with massive chocolate flakes in them. Strike remained on the bench, his thoughts a jumble of contentment and an overzealous analysis of why he would need to keep in mind the romance of swans. When Robin returned, he received the enormous swirl of ice cream in a cone from her, and immediately pulled the flake out to eat it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I knew you'd be straight down to business with the flake," Robin smirked, taking a more delicate mouthful from the soft peak and licking where it threatened to spill over the cone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grinned. "Go on then, how am I supposed to eat a ninety nine?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You can eat it however you like," Robin insisted. "But if you don't want it dribbling all down your wrist, you should lick the sides first."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin concentrated on the meeting of cone and ice cream, working methodically around the circumference with her tongue. When she had done, the outside of the ice cream was smooth and she held it out with a look of triumph. She looked over at Strike, who was watching her intently, his jaw slightly slack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"There!" She announced. "None wasted."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike coughed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Nope. That was… time well spent," he agreed, looked at his own cone, and took a hefty and inelegant mouthful from the top. Robin laughed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The swans were making their way back past the bench. Robin took the flake out of her tidy cone, and ate it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We're a bit like a swan," Strike said, his mouth full of ice cream.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh yeah?" Robin was lightly intrigued.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah. I'm the ugly bugger working away underneath, and you make it all look graceful," he said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Is that a really bad analogy for us being a good team?" She chuckled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I was trying," he replied, "to put the romance back into swans."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think they'll manage to stay romantic without you!" Robin was tickled as he crunched down the last of the cone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"See, no waste. Not very pretty, but it got the job done," he said, licking his fingers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Took the words out of my mouth!" Robin said, and Strike laughed </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Some football research done to tidy up dates. Match time was still wrong, but thems the breaks.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Right, you might be a born again tee-totaller, but I need a drink,” Strike said, drumming lightly on his thigh with his right hand. Robin looked down at it and back up to him, her eyebrow arched.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not gone four yet. We could pop into a chemist and get you some nicotine gum or something,” she said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m fine. I’m completely capable of self discipline, Robin,” he insisted, deliberately forcing his hands to be still.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin was unconvinced, but she knew better than to press him when he had made up his mind, and she pulled away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want to stop in a pub on the way, or shall we wait until we’re back?” She asked as she joined the traffic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Happy to wait if you want. You’re not drinking anyway, are you?” he replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I dunno. The fresh air made me feel much better than I did, I don’t mind having a small glass of something,” Robin conceded.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>It was nearly five by the time they got back, and Robin was actually surprised how much she really did want a drink. She didn’t dig too deeply into her feelings, but it was definitely connected to having had a lovely day with Strike and being in no hurry to have it end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll get these,” she said, and Strike walked to sit down. He was limping slightly, she noticed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She brought a pint over, carrying a glass of red wine for herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you ok?” She asked, handing him the pint.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, just need to rest it. Shouldn’t have slept with it on the other night,” he said, rubbing his knee slightly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” she said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not your fault. I’m a big boy, Robin,” he said, leaning back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, but if I wasn’t so dru...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can we not dissect Friday night again? Today’s been great,” he said, gesturing his pint towards her untouched wine glass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She smiled, and picked it up and had a large mouthful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Never drinking again, she said,” he muttered, the corner of his mouth turned up as he had another drink himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You just said…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m teasing,” he laughed. “I just meant for you to not beat yourself up and have this get all weird again. It’s not the first time I’ve got pissed and not taken care of myself properly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, but normally my contribution is more helpful than getting pissed with you and adding to the problem!” Robin protested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well you haven’t added to my problems today. You bought me biscuits, ice cream, a couple of sausage rolls and a bag of sweets. And a pint,” he listed, lifting the glass in his hand for emphasis.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not convinced I’m doing you any good with any of that,” she replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grinned. “I’m not convinced you did me any harm on Friday night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For a man who doesn’t want to dissect Friday night, you’re doing a rubbish job,” Robin said. The wine was really smooth and she had already got over halfway down the glass. She made a mental note to stop at this one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not dissecting it. I’m reminiscing,” he said. He knew he was pushing, but found it almost impossible to pull away after spending so much of the weekend socially with Robin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bit hard to reminisce about something you can’t remember,” Robin replied. The wine was nearly gone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can remember some of it,” he said, and deliberately held eye contact. Robin was the first to look away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, apart from that,” she said, cursing herself for blushing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, apart from that,” he affirmed. “I remembered a bit more last night while I was watching the match.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin looked back at him, and he could see she was trying to hold a neutral expression.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Literally nothing happened. You fell asleep, as did I, and then I turned over in the night and put my arm over you. That’s it,” he said evenly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin knew he was telling the truth. That wasn’t what was bothering her. She was trying to deal with feeling a little bit disappointed, which was bloody ridiculous. She forced herself to smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s a good thing, right?” He said, noting her slightly slumped shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” she blinked. “Can I have another?” She asked on autopilot, holding out her empty glass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right, yeah,” Strike said, taking her glass and going up to the bar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin sat trying to process what was going on in her head and heart. She’d really enjoyed spending time with Strike today, just as friends. But she realized now that she hadn’t just been doing that. She’d been acting with the vague idea in the back of her head that they had a shared secret that neither could remember, the tantalizing possibility of </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> between them. Now she knew there was nothing, she couldn’t help a rising sense of dread that the good time she could actually remember was all an illusion too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike returned with a fresh pint for himself and another glass of red. Robin took it with thanks and took another large mouthful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you all right Ellacott?” He asked, eyes narrowed in concern.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” she said weakly. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Pull your bloody self together. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike looked at her, trying to discern what had caused the sudden shift in mood. He had been pushing, he knew. Definitely flirting, he knew that as well. But he couldn’t see where he had stepped over a line to get this response, and he was debating whether or not to let the silence pull something from Robin, or whether to change tack, when Robin sat up straighter, let out a long breath, took another drink and smiled at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So nothing happened. Apart from that,” she said, aiming for firm and instead hitting ever so slightly tearful and evidently a bit tiddly again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike sat with his mouth ajar, then licked his lips and swallowed. “Robin, I…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, it’s fine! You don’t have to explain. It’s a </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span> thing. Nothing is a good thing. I am all about the good things, as you know,” she said, gesticulating a little too widely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His forehead furrowed, he rubbed his jaw and felt that strong urge to reach into his pocket for his cigarettes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What have I said?” He asked finally. “Because twenty minutes ago we were great, and now you’re nearly crying.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Am not,” Robin said, brushing at her eyes with the back of her hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please, Robin,” he said, and something in his tone made her look at him properly. His face was full of concern, and there was something little-boy-lost about it too. Seeing Strike helpless physically was one thing, but watching him flounder emotionally was something else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s fine. I’m being silly,” she said, trying to dismiss it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Talk to me? I don’t know what I’ve done,” he pleaded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You haven’t done anything. And you’re not going to do anything. And that’s a good thing, because nothing means that everything is still exactly… the… same,” Robin faltered into actual tears by the end of the sentence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike couldn’t bear it, reaching his hand forward to take one of hers, stilling it from the wild gestures she was making to underline her points. Points he didn’t understand but seemed of vital importance to her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please,” he repeated. “I don’t understand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. I know you don’t. And I don’t know how to tell you without spoiling everything. So let’s just get drunk again and maybe you can snog me on the stairs and I’ll feel better about </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing happening</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” she gabbled, and took another mouthful of wine with her free hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike wasn’t even slightly drunk, one and a bit pints down. Possessed of all his usual faculties, he worked through what she was saying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want to get drunk again… so that you’ll feel better about nothing happening, after we kissed?” He said carefully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shhh. It’s fine. I’ll be fine,” Robin insisted, stuck in a hole she couldn’t get out of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike felt his heartbeat strongly through his ribs. He wasn’t a stupid man, not by a long chalk, but he felt about as idiotic as he had ever felt as it dawned on him what was going on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think,” he said, reaching forward and plucking the glass out of her hand, “this has done everything it needed to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin let him take it without protest, thoroughly miserable now. He put the glass beside him on the table, still holding one of her hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Robin,” he said softly, and she hiccuped. “I think I’ve completely missed what was right in front of me.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Robin looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and shining, the relatively small amount of alcohol not enough to make her paralytic tonight, but enough to unleash a melancholy that not only demolished physical inhibitions, but emotional ones too. It served to make her feel every last drop of her pain, but completely hamper her efforts to explain it, or, perhaps more wisely, keep it to herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had taken the wine away, but she didn't really want any more. It had gone down too smoothly, and now left a claggy feeling in the roof of her mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her right hand now free, she brought it over her other one, and now she realized why the left hand was warm and still. Strike's large hand had encased it, and was, she noticed, squeezing lightly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's nice," she smiled, patting the back of his hand approvingly, before her face crumpled into unhappy tears again. He was going to go home and then she would come in to work the following morning and he'd never put his arm around her again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"God, why are you crying, love?" she heard him, as though from a distance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Because it's no use! It's broken now… I broke it," she wailed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Come on, let's call it a night," he was saying, and she gave in to her fate, letting him lead her to a taxi and a cold empty bed, empty forever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She walked beside him, enjoying the feeling of leaning against him, his arm around her waist, probably for the last time. Her perception was dulled, but even through that, it seemed they had been walking for far longer than would have been necessary to get to a taxi.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Where's the taxi?" She asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You're not getting one," Strike replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You're making me walk?!" She exclaimed. He hated her now, he was going to make her walk off her embarrassment. She had ruined everything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's not far. You've done it loads of times," he reassured her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a little longer to register they were on their way to Denmark Street.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Why are we going to work?" She asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We're not. I'm taking you home because I'm not gonna leave you in a cab in this state," he told her, fishing his keys out while still holding her up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm so sorry," she said. "I've messed everything up."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, you really haven't," he said, putting his key in the door and pushing it open, helping her inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was looking into the abyss now. What would be the point in pretending anymore? It was a disaster.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike had squeezed her hand, hoping to convey what he was feeling with a look and a touch, but he quickly realized he could have told her he was Father Christmas and it would have been as meaningful. It wasn't so much the drink, though now he considered it, she hadn't eaten all that much today, so two hastily knocked back glasses of cheap red plonk were going to kick a bit. But it was the flood of emotion that seemed to have pushed her into a state that was barely coherent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She seemed despairing, and as much as he wanted to get through to her that despair was completely unnecessary, he knew she wasn't listening, railroading herself into the very worst she could possibly imagine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was nothing he could do but wait for her to spin back down again, and that wasn't likely tonight. He might have considered putting her in a taxi if it had just been two glasses of red wine. But the sobbing and the revelation of what was really going on sealed his decision to take her back to his flat, and this time, let her have the bed alone. She could sleep it off, and then they could actually talk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She made slow, careful progress up the stairs, and made to enter the office, but Strike steered her to continue climbing. They passed the first few steps without incident, and once at the top, Strike let them in, and Robin stood swaying a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"C'mon, bedroom's this way," he said, ushering her on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hesitated and looked at him with something like alarm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Why are we going in there?" She asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Because it's time for you to go to sleep, and there's a bed in there," he said, like he was talking to a child.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh," she replied flatly. "Of course. Sleep."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He helped her round to the side of the bed, taking her coat off her, and her boots, and she sat down on the edge of the mattress. Strike sat beside her, the bed dipping and making her wobble into him. He put out a steadying arm to her thigh, and put his left arm round her shoulders. She was breathing in that shuddery way that follows a hearty cry, and she leaned her head into his chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It was nothing," she whispered, and the note of pain in her voice broke Strike's heart. He dipped his face down, kissing the hair on the top of her head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop, you daft woman,” he whispered back, into her hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin pulled herself up and back, trying to focus on him, but having trouble because he was so close.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop what?” She asked, a little belligerently. He shook his head. There was no point in having a conversation now, but he was reluctant to leave her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Doesn’t matter. You should try and sleep it off,” he said gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want to kiss me, Cormoran?” She asked suddenly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He froze, blinked and let his breath out slowly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think you need some sleep,” he reiterated, carefully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you don’t?” She said, sulkily.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Robin…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“S’ok. ‘M just making sure how much of an idiot I am,” she said, glumly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not an idiot. I’d love to kiss you, I just… I just don’t think it’s a good idea tonight,” he told her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re just saying that to be nice,” she replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yep. I am,” he laughed slightly. “A nice man who doesn’t want to take advantage of you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What if I want you to take ‘vantage?” she slurred.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike hadn’t the slightest intention of taking advantage, but he wanted to settle her before he left, so he decided that a brief attempt at getting through to her might be worth it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why d’you want me to take advantage?” He asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because I know when I wake up everything will be gone and I don’t want to think about it. I want you to lie me down on this bed and I think I would like you to make love to me, because y’might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb,” she said, getting it all out without pause, gasping in a breath at the end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike snorted softly, closing his eyes for a second. It wasn’t the most graciously made offer he’d ever had, but it was certainly the most appealing one he ever knew for certain he was going to turn down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not going to do that, Robin,” he said, opening his eyes and looking in her crestfallen, tear stained face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t want to? You don’t want me?” She asked bleakly. He sighed in response, pulling her head towards him and kissing her forehead. He caught a waft of perfume as he did so, and she let out a quiet wail and threw her arms round his neck. Strike was already using much of his considerable reserves of self discipline, and the weight of her tangled round him brought him as close as he had been to considering just laying down beside her as she went to sleep, but the next ten seconds reminded him that would have been a very bad idea.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She pulled back far enough to look at him, her clear eyes wide, her expression so sad. The inches hung between them for a second or two, and then he succumbed to temptation and brought his head down to hers, the kiss close-mouthed at first, and then she was trying to suck in his lower lip, whimpering slightly and he forced himself back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Robin, I can’t,” he said, as firmly as he could. “I need to go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No…” she pleaded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I've got to. Because I know the reason you want me is because I'm the bloke who won't take advantage of you when you're like this, no matter how much you beg me. And I want you to still want me in the morning so I've got to stay that bloke now"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He reached around to peel her arms from his neck, his resolve stronger now he’d reminded himself that indulgence now would scupper greater rewards later on. She resisted slightly, but her belligerence was draining away and after a few seconds more, she let him pull up and away, his hand on her shoulder gently pushing her to lie down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Get some kip, Ellacott,” he said soothingly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ok,” she relented, curling up in a ball on her side, and he pulled a blanket over her. He flicked out the light, and turned back at the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Night Robin,”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Night, Strike,” she said, already sounding like she was drifting off, and then groggily, as you might at the end of a phone call with family, she said, “Love you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike breathed in heavily and smiled to himself, shaking his head slightly as he closed the door and made his way to the armchair to settle down and take his prosthesis off.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Strike slept in the armchair, his coat over himself. He woke early, coming-to from a dream in which he was going on a ruck. In the dream, he had prepared himself, hoisting the backpack up and round his shoulders with huge difficulty, but once it was there, found it was weightless as he ran over boggy terrain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and yawned loudly, before remembering that his partner was hopefully still sound asleep a few feet away. Gathering himself together, he hobbled gingerly to the loo to relieve himself, and then filled the kettle. He pressed his tongue into the back of his teeth, pushing down the morning craving for a smoke, and focused on methodically preparing two mugs, tea bag in each, hot water on them, teaspoon mashing the bag thoroughly and for a decent amount of time, milk splashed in sparingly, and sugar liberally applied. He took a large mouthful of his and sighed contentedly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He allowed himself to return to what had occupied his thoughts before sleep claimed him. Two nights before, he had basked in the intimacy of sleeping soundly against Robin’s body, last night had ended with her, no doubt merely reflexively saying ‘Love you’ as she had fallen asleep. She hadn’t meant it, not like that. But what did he mean ‘like that’? It wasn’t a passionate declaration, arising from extremes of emotion, and hitting with the force of a hammer blow. She probably didn’t even register she was saying it, it just bubbled up from her subconscious as a thing you say at the end of a conversation with the people closest to you. </span>
  <em>
    <span>The people closest to you. Your best mate. Your partner. The person you spend your life with.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He thought of Joan, and how much he had loved her, how much he had known she loved those around her dearly. It wasn’t dramatic, and it wasn’t destructive. It was spectacular only in its steadfastness. </span>
  <em>
    <span>And wasn’t that amazing?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Breathing in deeply through his nose, he stretched out his back, picked up the tea he had made for Robin as well as his own, and went to the bedroom.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Robin was in that liminal space between sleeping and waking. She was aware of her breath, even and steady. She was a perfect temperature, cocooned in the warmth of the blanket around her. There was the slight pulse of a headache in her right temple, but not insistent enough to rouse her from the sense of floating in comfort, reality kept at bay, just for a little while longer. Reality hovered close by, she knew, and she had a growing awareness it was going to crash in and demolish her comfort. The more she tried to push it away, the clearer it became, and suddenly, she remembered where she was and her eyes snapped open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Morning, sunshine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looked down at the end of the bed, where Strike sat in a rumpled t-shirt and navy tracksuit trousers. He was drinking from a mug in his right hand, and holding another in his left, resting it on his knee. He held it out to her as she pushed herself up to sitting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Morning,” she said, unable to meet his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you’re going to keep waking up here, we need to come to some kind of arrangement,” he said lightly as she took it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin held her mug with both hands, like it was grounding her. She took a welcome mouthful of tea, and finally looked at him. She was startled to see him looking right back at her, his eyes soft, his mouth curled in a gentle half smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I made a fool of myself, didn’t I?” she asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gave a sort of gallic shrug.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can’t remember anything like that,” he replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well I can,” she said, pushing aside his dismissive response. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any of it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh. I’m sorry to hear it. I enjoyed most of it,” he countered, still softly smiling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin looked at him without speaking for a moment, trying to work out what his behaviour indicated. Her hastily convened plan had been to scrub it out as drunken ramblings, given that she couldn’t really pretend to have memory loss after only two glasses. Strike seemed stubbornly disinclined to let her sidestep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Most of it? Which bits? The sobbing into my wine or the having to sleep… where did you sleep anyway?” She was distracted for a minute.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In the chair,” he told her, gesturing towards the door with his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” she said, taking another sip of tea.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How’s the head this morning?” He asked, conversationally. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not too bad actually.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t think you were that drunk really, seen you worse,” he mused aloud,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Really?” She snorted. “Given the way I behaved last night, I find that hard to believe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“To be honest, Ellacott, I’d be more than happy for you to beg me to kiss you whenever you want, so ‘worse’ is a relative term,” he said, thoughtfully. He looked down at his empty mug and put it on the floor. “Unless you’ve changed your mind. Wouldn’t blame you, you’ve seen me first thing in the morning for two of the last three days, and I’m an ugly sod at the best of times.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin cocked her head to one side, her face serious as she worked through the implications of what he’d just said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not sure I underst…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, me neither, really. But from what I gathered you were actually a bit disappointed that nothing untoward happened on Friday night, and you managed to convince yourself that the world was ending off the back of it,” he explained, his elbows on his wide apart knees, his fingers laced together casually in the space between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Course ‘nothing’ is a relative term too, because if by ‘nothing’ you meant sex, or anything like it, then ‘nothing’ is accurate. But that doesn’t mean that </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing at all</span>
  </em>
  <span> happened,” Strike continued.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You said nothing had happened,” Robin asked, seeking confirmation, unsure of what he was saying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘S not true. I spent the night holding my gorgeous best friend and feeling incredibly close to her. And then I woke up with her the following morning, and the day after that she took me out for ice cream, had a few drinks and begged me to lay her down on my bed and make love to her. I don’t think that’s nothing,” he said, with a sincerity that knocked Robin backwards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was too stunned to speak, and Strike shuffled up the bed to her, taking her mug to put it to one side, and drawing both her hands together in his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you have changed your mind, I’ll leave it, and we’ll just get on with a day’s work and be grown ups about it. But I don’t want you to change your mind because you think I didn’t want to be with you on Friday after I kissed you, or last night. Right now I can’t think of anything I want more than just to be with you,” he said, pulling her hands to his mouth and pressing them against it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know what to say,” she said softly, her tone awed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good start,” he said. “I should point out it's Monday, so any responses involving kissing will need to take into account official business.” He was joking, but she detected a tightness in his voice, and she remembered the little-boy-lost look from the night before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you mean it?” She asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does it sound like I don’t?” He countered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she shook her head, “it sounds bloody wonderful.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She smiled at him, and his response was to release her hands. He smoothly ran his left hand behind Robin’s head and pulled her to him, his right hand holding her jaw as he took her mouth with his and kissed her thoroughly. When he pulled back, and with her eyes closed, Robin could feel herself suspended in that liminal space again, his hand still behind her head, the other dropped down into her lap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wonderful is a better start,” Strike said. “But it is still Monday, so you’ll have to consider yourself on a promise.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The interesting thing about a promise is how it becomes part of the experience in the same way a memory does from the other side. It occurred to Robin that anticipation hadn’t always been a friend to her, tipping too easily into anxiety. The day was busy, a few new clients to meet, and she didn’t have time to stress over possibilities. Instead she settled into a quiet, secret relishing of the butterflies in her tummy whenever she thought about how the morning had turned out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike had been entirely professional in the office, as had she, and whenever the demon doubt tempted her to think that she had imagined it all, her mind slipped back to him kissing her in his bed, having just said all those amazing things, and the doubts were banished like shadows disappearing in sudden sunlight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were a few stolen moments, of course. When she had stood in the kitchenette, for example, making drinks for Pat, Strike and herself, and Strike had stood beside her, ostensibly to show her something he had printed out. His arm, the sleeve rolled up to just under his elbow, had grazed hers. She was wearing her jeans from the night before, but she had discarded the fluffy jumper now, and her own forearm was exposed in the three-quarter-length sleeve blouse that had been underneath it. The frisson of the hair on his arm brushing against the much finer down on hers was as intense as if he had nuzzled into the sensitive flesh on her neck, and her breath had quickened in response. She knew he was aware of it because he kept his arm there, in a quite unnatural position until Pat had asked where her coffee was. As he moved slightly back for Robin to pass him, their eyes met and his were full of that promise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, towards the very end of the day, Pat had asked Robin if she would be able to take a look at the details for the lease on the new office. Robin had walked over to the desk and was casting an eye over the information.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I think it all looks ok, but I'd want to sit down and double check everything, just to be sure," Robin said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well, I need to finalize things quickly, so could you look at it this evening and I can get on with it first thing," Pat explained.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I should think so…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sheaf of papers was plucked out of her hand suddenly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Robin's busy tonight," Strike said, walking back into the inner office with them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin turned back to Pat, who was scowling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll look at them first thing if he doesn’t get around to it," Robin smiled, her tone placating, concealing a crackle of excitement at his apparent brusque determination to keep her to himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Whenever he's ready. Rude git," Pat replied, muttering the last part under her breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she had picked up her bag and coat half an hour later, the sound of the office door closing behind her seemed to rattle more than just the woodwork. Robin was by Pat’s desk still, and she instantly knew he was standing in the doorway to their shared office. She turned to see him leaning on the frame of the open door, his arms loosely folded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She swallowed and gave him a nervous half smile as he looked at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s five thirty,” he said after a moment of charged silence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not like us to clock watch,” Robin replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Depends what we’re waiting for,” he returned, pushing himself away from the frame and walking over, his arms still crossed. Standing in front of her, he pulled one hand up to rub his chin, his eyes scrutinizing her closely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that you haven’t been home since our day trip.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” said Robin, not expecting him to say that. “Did you want me to go?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nope. I just wondered if you needed anything there,” he explained.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well I haven’t cleaned my teeth and I could do with a shower and some clean knickers,” she replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right. You hungry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Starving,” she affirmed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ok. I’ll pop out for some food and you can go upstairs and have a shower, yeah?” Strike suggested, already reaching for his coat. “There should be a clean towel in the bathroom. I won’t be long. Door’s unlocked up there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She must have looked startled at him taking charge, because he paused at the door, and smiled as he adjusted the coat collar. He paused for a fraction of a second, and then stepped forward and planted a quick kiss on her cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See you in a bit,” he said, and was gone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin listened to the sound of his footsteps descending, and let out a small, happy giggle. She looked around at the office, picked up her things and locked up behind herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Up in the flat, she deposited her things down by the side of Strike’s armchair, and made her way to the bathroom. It was spartan in there, but just as he said, there were two towels, neatly folded on the single shelf in there. She closed the door behind her, shed her clothes and turned the shower on. Testing the water with her hand, it was just about warm enough, and she got in, wetting her hair and using the black bottle of generic hair and body wash that was hooked over the shower hose. It smelled of him. Of course it did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she felt satisfied she had washed away the detritus of the last 24 hours, she emerged, turning the shower off and grabbing a towel. She rubbed her hair vigorously and shook it out behind her, making do with raking her fingers through in place of a brush. She had one in her bag for when it had fully dried off. She looked at her jeans and blouse and underwear crumpled on the floor, and putting it all back on wasn’t an appealing thought now she was clean. She wondered if she could find and borrow one of Strike’s tops. It would surely work to cover most of her. She looped the towel around herself and emerged from the bathroom, only to come face to face with Strike coming into the flat with a blue plastic bag full of takeaway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked at her, and let out the ghost of a breath. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting; probably that she'd be showered and dressed again by the time he got back. Here she was, cheeks pink and scrubbed clean, her hair slightly damp, and one of his towels tucked just above her breasts, her shoulders bare. It was all he could do not to drop their food. Happily, he didn’t, putting it down on the table instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” Robin said, rechecking the dampness of her hair self consciously. “I was going to borrow a t-shirt or something. I slept in those clothes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was obvious, really, and something he should have foreseen, especially given how much he’d been making impromptu plans for the evening during the day. But he was still blind-sided by seeing her like this, and he walked towards her automatically, almost in a daze.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think I can find you something,” he managed, when he was inches away from her. He knew his voice cracked and betrayed his discombulation, but Robin, to his gratification, held his gaze steadily, her hand gently on the knot where the tucked towel was secured. “But I have to mention how much I appreciate this look,” he added, his voice husky.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was looking down at her, and Robin felt the heat of his eyes, and her stomach flip in response. He looked up into her face again, and his hand closed over hers on the towel. She wondered if he could feel how fast and hard her heart was beating. Dipping her eyes down to his hand, she watched it trail slowly upwards, grazing, feather-light, on the exposed skin of her breast bone and up to her neck. She looked up, into his eyes again, taking in a shuddering breath. It would take only a very small gesture for him to knock the towel open and have it fall to the floor. She wondered how he would react if she did it herself, and then blushed at her own audacity. She looked away, and he seemed to take it as bashfulness on her part, and took the smallest step backwards, letting his hand drop away from her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Food,” he said, blinking. “I got Chinese.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shrugged off his coat and moved back towards the table where the blue plastic bag was, draping the coat over the back of a chair. Robin was regretful that the moment passed, but she was hungry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Great,” she replied. “Can I have something to wear first?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Course,” he said, and she followed him into the bedroom where he found a large (of course it was) white t-shirt and handed it to her. “I’ll go and get some forks. Got a couple of beers if you want, too,” he said, disappearing out to let her change.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She emerged a minute or so later, and Strike wondered if there was anything she could suddenly appear in now that wouldn’t set the blood running to his groin. The t-shirt was enormous on her, but knowing what her clean, fresh, naked skin looked like underneath made it almost sexier that he could only pick out the suggestion of her figure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pushed a plate towards her, and then a green bottle of beer, and she came to sit. They both ate with enthusiasm, lightly discussing the new office, each trying to pace themselves and steel against the temptation to wolf the food down quickly and move on to something else. Robin could feel the effort to be slow sending sparks of electricity through her limbs. It was maddeningly delicious. Strike dropped his fork on his empty plate and took a long drink from his bottle. He put the bottle back down on the table and looked at it as he turned it a quarter turn.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got you something,” he said, fishing in the coat of the chair behind him. He pulled out a brand new Colgate toothbrush, still in the blister pack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robin grinned, delighted, as he held it out to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you!” she laughed, taking it, and getting up. “I really need this!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She went to the bathroom and he heard the sound of the tap running, and then the tinkle of plastic against glass as she had clearly put her toothbrush next to his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So much better!” She announced as she returned. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any clean knickers in that coat?” She joked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turned up his mouth in a half smile, and caught hold of her arm as she passed him to sit down again. She let him draw her into the triangle of his knees held wide, and stood above him, looking down at him as he looked up at her. He let go of her arm and ran his hands around her hips, up to her waist and down again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not gonna need any,” he almost growled, and Robin couldn’t help letting out the most exquisite whimper Strike had ever heard.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Her knees almost gave way beneath her, and she swayed forward into him, cradling his head for a moment before sinking onto the thigh of his good leg. She looked at him, her eyes hooded, her now dry hair falling forward as she leaned in to kiss him. She tasted of mint and sweetness as she rolled her lower lip against his, her hands still around his head. He desperately wanted to hoist her up and walk with her as they kissed, but while he was fairly confident he could stagger a short distance with her if he concentrated, he also knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on walking when he had her legs around his waist and her lips nipping playfully at his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I seem to remember something about laying you down on my bed,” he said in a low voice against her mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I seem to remember you saying no,” she teased, and he chuckled, pressing kisses under her chin and down the side of her neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does this feel like me saying no?” He murmured into the spot where her neck and shoulder met.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she breathed, and there was a helpless note to it that crystallized the ideas he had been rolling around distractedly all day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“C’mon then,” he said, pulling his head up, and letting the shift in his body tell her to stand, which she did, and he followed her up, drawing himself to his full height in front of her. Her hands were still resting on his shoulders, her grey-blue eyes dark with desire. He looked down at her lips and bent his head down to meet them, this time the kiss not playful, but deep and urgent, and he slipped his hand under the hem of the shirt she was wearing and felt how incredibly soft her skin was under his fingers. She was pressing herself into him, and he shifted his weight slightly, his erection now evident against her body. His other hand followed the first under the cotton, tracing up the side of her waist, even as the first cupped her behind and pulled even closer to him. He was slowly moving her backwards now, towards the bedroom, and she let him, but seemingly on the condition that she could remain entwined with him the whole way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once they were through the doorway, Robin began pulling at his shirt, tugging it from his trousers, running her own hands in a mirror of his, raking her nails through the hair on his belly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve got some catching up to do,” she said, gasping for breath. He reached down to begin unbuttoning the shirt, Robin resuming the kiss and killing any possibility of concentrating on such a fiddly mundane task, and he was on the third button when he lost his patience.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck it,” he snapped, and ripped the rest, and the shirt came off with a couple of sharp, frantic tugs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughed in response, but he just wanted to feel her skin against his now, and he pulled her flush against him, his hands in the small of her back, arching her backwards, and they dipped down onto the bed. It occurred to him that he really wished the bed was bigger, and that should be the first point of business in his new place. There was just enough space to lay comfortably on his side beside her, but more space was, strictly speaking, unnecessary when all he could think about was being as close to her as possible. He forked his big hands into her hair as he kissed her deeply, his tongue caressing hers, loving the way she clung to him one second, and the next trailed her fingers through the hair that covered so much of his body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He took a breath, his thumb running down the line of her jaw.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re overdressed,” he said, smiling as he reached down to shuffle the white shirt further up her belly, and she responded by completing the task, hooking it up and over her head. And then, he thought, with a sense of awed triumph, Robin Ellacott lay gloriously naked in his bed, her lips parted, her breath shallow and quick, her eyes dark and a little unfocused with desire because of him. It was as though some long forbidden thing had been opened to him as a gift. He wanted to take as much of the night as possible to enjoy her, and felt like rushing this would be sacrilege.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What are you thinking?" She whispered, and he detected a note of insecurity in her voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm thinking I want to memorize every single part of you,” he told her, his hand wandering down her neck, over her shoulder and down the sloping curve of her breast. He watched her face as he followed a small circle round her nipple with his forefinger and middle finger together, her eyes fluttering closed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to memorize how soft your skin feels,” he said, moving his fingers to her other nipple, noticing how she arched her body as he did so. He leaned down into her, and let just the tip of his tongue trace where his fingers had just been, listening to the gasp she gave in response. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to memorize how you taste,” he said, and pulled her nipple into the warmth of his mouth, her hands running into his messy curls now, and as his fingers continued their delicate dance downwards, she whimpered again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to memorize the sound you make when I do this…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nipped very lightly at her erect nipple with his teeth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And this…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ran his right hand up around the back of her shoulder, and his left dipped between her legs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And this…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ran his middle finger down her folds, a little into the wetness there, and back to the tip of of her clitoris, and the moan of pleasure she gave made him even harder than he already was as he pressed a rhythm like a heartbeat there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to memorize every tiny detail of what turns you on so I can make you melt like this whenever you want me to,” he said, moving his body up hers again, kissing up her neck and behind her ear, even as his fingers worked against her core.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cormoran,” she whispered, and he lifted his head, and met her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to fill in all the gaps in my mind so when I'm not with you I have a perfect memory to carry inside me," he said, looking into her intently, listening to the hitch in her breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Please, Cormoran. Oh please yes," she whispered again, arching into his hand, her eyes still connecting with his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Most of all I want to make sure you remember this and never have a reason to want to forget it," he said, and he watched her come apart and he took her ecstatic gasps into his mouth with another kiss.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want you,” she said, her voice stronger, “now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was breathing heavily, every part of him intensely aware of where their bodies were touching, and how her right hand was running down his belly and pulling at his belt. He put his hand over hers and took over, unbuckling quickly, and her eager hand was already yanking the button open and pulling the zip down, and she quickly slipped inside and took hold of him. He held his breath at her touch, further on than he thought he was, a deep moan bursting from him and then a shaking breath in as she began to move her hand against his length. He dipped his head to her shoulder again, concentrating on placing hungry kisses against her as a way to keep some control of himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cormoran, I mean it. Don’t you make me wait any longer,” she insisted, her hand in his hair tugging his head back a little, and, oh god, if that wasn’t the hottest thing he’d ever felt. He put his hand on her forearm to still her motion, and turned to sit on the edge of the bed, shuffling his trousers completely off and gingerly removing the prosthetic. He pulled the drawer of the rickety bedside table open and felt inside. He knew there were at least two condoms in there, because he’d seen them the week before and thought about how long it had been. He smirked to himself as his hand closed around one, and he ripped it open carefully and rolled it down himself. He was grateful for how cool it felt, one more hook for his self control.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turned back to Robin, who was looking at him, trailing her own hands up and down her belly, her hair wild, her lower lip bitten in, and her thighs pressed together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now that’s an image to remember,” he said, and she smiled. The mixture of shyness and wanton desire in her smile did something indescribable to him, and he put both his hands around her face and kissed her softly. She shifted underneath him, her legs falling apart in invitation, and he moved between them. She arched her back as he pressed into her, feeling her warmly enveloping him. He held himself there for a moment, and then her hips were circling under him and he let his pelvis match her rhythm. There was no conscious movement now, it was all instinct. Her hands were behind his shoulders and he held himself up on his right elbow, the other hand at the slope of her waist into her hips. He could hear her cries each time he filled her, and he could feel the press of her nails into the muscles of his shoulders that were flexed as he worked into her with increasing intensity. He could feel her movement becoming more frantic, the clutch of her hands against him becoming something desperate, and his hand reached down and hooked her leg up around his waist. The new angle hit both of them hard, he could tell, and he gasped as he felt his climax building. Her head was thrown back into his pillow, her face a picture of how lost she was in pleasure and when she cried his name again, he was gone too, his orgasm detonating powerfully, riding into her again, again, again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He collapsed over her, panting furiously, his limbs liquid now, tangled into hers like they were one being. After a minute or two, he was aware of her stroking the hair at the back of his neck, mewling softly into his forehead. He lifted his head to look at her. A lazy smile played round her lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you ok?” he asked, still breathless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mmmm,” she purred, and he laughed, reluctantly and with some difficulty, shifting backwards to pull carefully out of her. He settled himself on his side, and she adjusted herself too, turning away from him, and fitting perfectly in front of him, pulling his arm over her ribs and twining her fingers into his. His right arm was under her head, and he couldn’t stop putting gentle, slow kisses on her shoulder every few minutes. They lay in the warm quiet for a long time, not needing to speak, and the only thing either of them couldn’t remember was when they fell asleep in each other’s arms.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If you enjoyed this, I feel obliged to give credit to Justin Timberlake's Mirrors and Say Something.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Coda</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Robin shifted in her sleep, and when she woke, she was facing an expanse of dark chest hair, her head resting on Strike's bicep. His other arm was laying on her waist. She could hear the sounds of the waking city outside, and as she basked in the sensation of being cradled in his arms, her thoughts inevitably turned to the day ahead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She indulged herself by combing her hands through the thick hair in front of her, and Strike emitted a deep hum of appreciation that signaled he was awake too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Morning," Robin said softly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Morning," he responded, his hand drifting up from her waist to tangle with one of the hands she was holding against his chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'm gonna have to go home this morning before anything else," she told him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No," he replied sleepily, squeezing her hand, "we're just going to stay in bed all week."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You're going to keep me naked in your flat until they come to evict you?" She giggled quietly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Strike opened one eye, squinted down at her, and said, "Yup. I've decided."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He closed his eye again and brought his right forearm up to pull her closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Now shut up and go back to sleep," he added, and pretended to snore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughed again and patted him playfully with her left hand, ineffectively as it was squashed between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"If that was the plan, I definitely wouldn't need knickers. But I do, so…"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He groaned and opened both his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fine. You can go and get knickers on condition you bring back breakfast," he conceded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What, in my knickers?" She asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Now there's a thought," he said wickedly, his eyebrows going up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She blushed delightedly and wiggled against him, and then stopped as she felt the very obvious physical interest now pressing into her lower belly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "You keep waking up in my bed and he likes you."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Does he now?" She said, wiggling again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You keep doing that and I'm having </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>for breakfast," he warned, and she kept doing it anyway.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Half an hour later, wearing crumpled clothes that she first put on two days before, Robin kissed Strike goodbye as he unlocked the office door, and descended the stairs. She felt as light as froth inside, and by the time she reached the hallway at the bottom of the building, the assorted memories of the past few days had created a warm smile on her face to no one in particular. She was startled by Pat opening the main door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pat looked at Robin, took in the outfit and narrowed her eyes fractionally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good morning,” Pat said, and held the door as she could see Robin was leaving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Morning,” Robin said, aware that she had been clocked. She remained resolutely breezy. “Strike’s having a look at those lease details now. I just need to pop out for a bit, I’ll be back later.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fair enough,” Pat replied, and Robin skipped out onto the street, pretending she hadn’t heard Pat mutter, “Must think I came down in the last shower.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t matter. The clear cool sunshine of a Spring day in London lay ahead of her, and the warm welcoming arms of her best friend and partner waited for her return. If there was a reason to feel less than optimistic today, she had forgotten what it was.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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